


The Food Fight of '97

by kashinoha



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Gen, Humor, Pre-Canon, Shinra scares the shit out of everybody, typical Izaya and Shizuo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashinoha/pseuds/kashinoha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in their Raijin days, Shinra always stopped Shizuo and Izaya's fights before they got out of hand. Here's one time where he didn't. Rated T for Shizuo's potty mouth, abuse of food, and general bad influences.</p><p>All characters © Ryohgo Narita</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Food Fight of '97

**The Food Fight of '97**

 

He may have favored clunky, thick-rimmed spectacles over soft contact lenses, he may have only weighed forty-six kilos soaking wet, and he may or may not have had a not-so-closet obsession with vivisection, but Kishitani Shinra was one of the most respected pupils at Raijin High.

Was it because of his grades? Those were certainly impressive, but no. Anybody could be valedictorian.

It was because he, for some reason, was the only person able to even remotely curb Heiwajima Shizuo and Orihara Izaya's violent proclivities.

Each school had their own Coyotes and Roadrunners or their Elmers and Bugs; Tom and Jerrys, whatever analogy you preferred. With Raijin, it was Heiwajima Shizuo and Orihara Izaya. You had the sly and cunning one, quiet and smug like a snake that’s eaten its fill, and the loud, angry one that was more self-destructive than anything else. It was so clichéd you could cry.

All of the students, year regardless, were aware that the two of them were going to kill each other one day. Bloodily. There were even jokes about putting a pair of fresh stones in the Zoshigaya Cemetery before graduation, since the burial grounds happened to be placed almost directly behind the school (and if that didn’t say something symbolic, nothing did). These jokes were always accompanied by shifty eyes and shaky laughter. When those two got going it was impossible for anyone to stop them, and no one besides Kishitani Shinra had ever tried with much success. To everyone else, it was like trying to go up against a mudslide with a shovel. They knew better than to get caught in the crossfire if they valued their body parts intact.

School acted as sacred grounds, where fists were held in precarious abeyance by brick and plaster and murderous intents were curbed by piles of homework. It was difficult for the two to fight with actual weapons during the school day for legal reasons. And Shizuo, despite his near-constant state of high dudgeon, valued the safety of his classmates.

"I really don't see the point in fighting during school," Izaya had said once to Shinra. "What would be the use of provoking Shizu-chan in a place where I can observe so many humans instead?" By that time Izaya was busy stirring up trouble with other high schools in the area, and such things were inclined to take up most of his time. Izaya knew how to plot and connive, and he exercised this talent with _disturbing_ sedulity. Pinning schools against one another just because he could was right up his alley (Shinra, on another note, would soon find himself playing the part of the mediator in that particular conflict. Again).

Since Izaya was for the most part occupied with other devious scheming, Shizuo's family rarely had to pay the school for property damage, and Izaya kept his possession of sharp objects to a bare minimum. The teachers breathed unseen sighs of relief that their classrooms had not turned into ground zeroes, and some of the students had stopped wearing padded protection to school under their clothes.

The populace's reprieve rained thin, however, since Shizuo and Izaya tended to resort to...other creative means of warfare.

Like a wheel of fortune whose paint had pared and rotted from overuse, things replayed in a vicious cycle. First, Izaya would aggravate Shizuo. Since Shizuo had about a hundred different berserk buttons, this was not a particularly difficult feat. Then Shizuo, enraged, would get his revenge in some way or another and piss off Izaya for real. Repeat process. Izaya would hack into the school's database to change Shizuo's grades. Shizuo would put dog shit in Izaya's locker. Izaya would tell all of the girls that Shizuo slept with a pink stuffed hippo named Pochi-pochi. Shizuo would throw spit-balls and luges at the back of Izaya's head. Izaya would demagnetize Shizuo's meal card. Shizuo would have the PA announcer claim over the loudspeakers that Izaya regularly masturbated during physics. Izaya would slip whoopie cushions and stink-bombs under Shizuo's seat. Shizuo would lock Izaya's schoolbooks in the janitor's closet (and on one famous occasion even buried them in the big cemetery behind the school). The list went on.

Izaya got a kick out of everyone's reactions (Shinra then had only a slim notion of just how deep his twisted philanthropy was), and Shizuo would have countless opportunities, all of them unsuccessful, to curb his rage. They played at the shapes of boys, but the truth remained: there were two true-as-day monsters inhabiting Ikebukuro.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Maybe Shizu-chan is just that stupid."

Shinra now watched the latest development play out, wondering if he should say something. It was lunch hour, and Izaya was munching contently on a home-made bento. Because people were too intimidated by him and his, ah, _company_ to establish a comfortable propinquity, Izaya usually ate alone. Having known Izaya since middle school, Shinra joined him from time to time, but Izaya had informed him that he generally ended up losing his appetite when he ate with med majors.

Heiwajima Shizuo, moments ago, had made a beeline for their table in the school's cafeteria, stomping over with the force of a small elephant herd and slamming both hands down on the table hard enough for the chopsticks on them to bounce a full foot in the air.

"What did you do this time?" Shinra had whispered to Izaya.

"That _flea_ changed my grades again," Shizuo spat, holding up a scan-tron test that had seen better days. The sad-looking corners were actually tearing under the strength of his grip. "There is no fucking way I got a _two_ on this. It’s not even possible to _get_ a two."

Izaya smiled coyly, the right corner of his mouth curling up like peeled onion skins. "Like I said, maybe Shizu-chan is just that stupid. You're brain's always been protozoan, but I'd even go further to say that most eukaryotes have higher cerebral functions than you."

Shizuo was rolling up the sleeves of his Raijin blazer. _Here we go,_ Shinra thought dismally. He could practically see Shizuo's Danger Meter of Rage moving past the yellow and into the orange area, slowly creeping toward the fated red. He’d once called Shizuo “Ikebukuro’s Most Inappropriately Named Person,” and at times like these he really wished he hadn’t.

"Are you sure you didn't misread the test?" Izaya asked, gray eyes shining big and doe-like. Shinra snorted around his tuna. Picture of innocence, sure. He should put a stop to this before it gets out of hand.

"YES, I'M—fuck. Just. I'm going to ram this test up your skinny little ass in about one minute," Shizuo growled, stamping his foot and grinding it into the tiled floor.

Izaya considered. "There are so many mistakes on it that I might get constipated if you stick that in my butt, Shizu-chan," he protested, nodding at the scan-tron. "You should really study more."

Shizuo's Danger Meter of Rage finally hit the red area. In a situation where others would have run for their mothers, Shinra merely sighed and adjusted his glasses with an idle finger. Should he stop them today? What even gave him such a responsibility in the first place? True, he had known Izaya since middle school and was the closest thing the kid had to an actual friend, but that wasn't quite right. He liked to think it was because of his amiable people skills and charisma, and not because he was just as batshit AWOL section-eight as those two.

"Izaya. I will—" Whatever Shizuo was going to do no one knew, because at that moment he found himself with a pickled plum sliding down his face. He peeled it away and stared at it as if it was a new life form. "...the _fuck?"_

Rolling his eyes, Shinra opened his mouth to stop them like he always did... and closed it, against his better judgment. He had always been there to calm them down before things got hairy, because if Shizuo and Izaya valued anything in this dull, dismal high school, it was Shinra. Shinra, who was training to become a doctor even though he would probably get his license without the twelve years of college, med school, residency, and Board Exams. Shinra, who was actually so respected at Raijin High because he could happily expose your insides if you got on his bad side and was therefore just as terrifying as Izaya and Shizuo in his own way. Shinra, who, as a result of his quirky father, was perhaps a bit more twisted upstairs than he liked to think.

Shinra, who always hung around Shizuo and Izaya fearlessly, despite the reputations, rumors, and quotidian shenanigans that tended to be more violent than not. Shinra, who always stopped them.

This time he didn't.

At the lunch table, Izaya was giving Shizuo a wide-eyed stare. "Whoops!" he exclaimed, holding a hand to his mouth. "My hand slipped!"

Shizuo, ever so eloquent, responded by grabbing a juice box from the kid at the next table and hurling it at Izaya's head. That had been the catalyst, Shinra mused later. There was no typical holler of "food fight," or "every man for himself," but the battle of the meals just seemed to _happen._ One minute everything was fine and dandy and the next edible projectiles were whizzing through the air. Shinra ducked under the table, able to avoid most of it, but he still found bits of rice nettled into his hair later that evening and he smelled like tuna for the next two days despite his numerous showers. Most students hadn't known exactly what had started the fight, but most of them had decided to succumb to the childish delight of being able to throw pre-prepared food at one another. Some sliced apples found their way onto Izaya's face, and he even ate a few. People were ducking to avoid losing eyes to flying pocky. Airborne missiles of cheese and onigiri splattered against the windowpanes (which Izaya and Shizuo would be forced to clean up in detention later that day), and pudding made contact with wet accuracy.

When it was all said and done, Izaya found himself trying to clean out mashed potatoes from the insides of his ears with a wince. Shizuo had gotten a faceful of curry powder and was looking irate at the fact that he could not seem to stop sneezing. Kadota Kyohei, the sophomore student council president, muttered in disgust as sticky gobs of fruit stuck to his clothes, and a senior named Tom tried furtively to scoop the natto out of his pants when no one was looking.

In Raijin—no, _Ikebukuro's_ future years, both Orihara Izaya and Heiwajima Shizuo would become something of legends. The song was always the same: Heiwajima Shizuo did that, Orihara Izaya did this. They ruled the city from its shadows, shaping it and the people who visited with their fantastic stories. After a while, some wondered if they'd been stretched to grotesque hyperbole by myths and distortion of tongue, more legends than men. What is them, and what is legend anymore?

Others who have met either one of them personally will say that they are one and the same thing. It's not too difficult to believe.

Years later, on lonely nights when the soft puff of Celty's open neck is the only sound in the room, Shinra often contemplates the reasons as to why the food fight of '97 had been such a remembered event in Raijin history. It had not lasted very long, nor had it been extensively damaging to any school property (excluding the sanity of the cafeteria workers). He often contemplates why he hadn't stopped Izaya and Shizuo in the first place.

When he thinks harder about it, Shinra can sometimes remember a smile—a genuine, lopsided one—on Shizuo's face as he hurled messes of food across the room. Or the laugh of Izaya as he ducked and dodged, light like tinkling splinters of miniature bells.

Maybe, Shinra muses as the night slowly turns into morning, that had been one time for them, both of them, all of them, when they had actually been having fun.

End.

**Author's Note:**

> This is another remake of a fic I wrote back in 2010. Strangely, I had a dream about Durarara last night, which caused me to revisit the series, as well as my old fics in the fandom. All of the canon information I took from Narita's actual timeline of events.


End file.
